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Language is the dress of thought and as the noblest mien or most graceful action would be degraded and obscured by a garb appropriated to the gross employments of rusticks or mechanics, so the most heroick sentiments will lose their efficacy

Samuel Johnson

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Samuel Johnson
Age: 75 †
Born: 1709
Born: September 18
Died: 1784
Died: December 13
Biographer
Bookseller
Essayist
Lexicographer
Linguist
Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Poet
Politician
Teacher
Translator
Writer
Lichfield
Staffordshire
Dr Johnson
Dr. Johnson
Great Moralist
Lose
Mechanics
Mien
Loses
Noblest
Employments
Language
Mechanic
Garb
Action
Gross
Appropriated
Thought
Employment
Obscured
Would
Sentiments
Degraded
Dress
Graceful
Dresses
Efficacy

More quotes by Samuel Johnson

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He who writes much will not easily escape a manner, such a recurrence of particular modes as may be easily noted.
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To proportion the eagerness of contest to its importance seems too hard a task for human wisdom. The pride of wit has kept ages busy in the discussion of useless questions, and the pride of power has destroyed armies, to gain or to keep unprofitable possessions.
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Thought is always troublesome to him who lives without his own approbation.
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Whoever commits a fraud is guilty not only of the particular injury to him who he deceives, but of the diminution of that confidence which constitutes not only the ease but the existence of society.
Samuel Johnson
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A lexicographer, a writer of dictionaries, a harmless drudge.
Samuel Johnson
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I know not anything more pleasant, or more instructive, than to compare experience with expectation, or to register from time to time the difference between idea and reality. It is by this kind of observation that we grow daily less liable to be disappointed.
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The mental disease of the present generation is impatience of study, contempt of the great masters of ancient wisdom, and a disposition to rely wholly upon unassisted genius and natural sagacity.
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Pleasure that is obtained by unreasonable and unsuitable cost must always end in pain.
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Avarice is generally the last passion of those lives of which the first part has been squandered in pleasure, and the second devoted to ambition. He that sinks under the fatigue of getting wealth, lulls his age with the milder business of saving it
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Greece appears to be the fountain of knowledge Rome of elegance
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The arguments for purity of life fail of their due influence, not because they have been considered and confuted, but because they have been passed over without consideration.
Samuel Johnson
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You cannot give me an instance of any man who is permitted to lay out his own time contriving not to have tedious hours.
Samuel Johnson
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The world is seldom what it seems to man, who dimly sees, realities appear as dreams, and dreams realities.
Samuel Johnson
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The fiction of happiness is propagated by every tongue and confirmed by every look till at last all profess the joy which they do not feel and consent to yield to the general delusion.
Samuel Johnson
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We have always pretensions to fame which, in our own hearts, we know to be disputable.
Samuel Johnson
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No money is better spent than what is laid out for domestic satisfaction. A man is pleased that his wife is dressed as well as other people, and the wife is pleased that she is dressed.
Samuel Johnson
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It is better to suffer wrong than to do it, and happier to be sometimes cheated than not to trust.
Samuel Johnson
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Being married to those sleepy-souled women is just like playing at cards for nothing: no passion is excited and the time is filled up. I do not, however, envy a fellow one of those honeysuckle wives for my part, as they are but creepers at best and commonly destroy the tree they so tenderly cling about.
Samuel Johnson
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I am always for getting a boy forward in his learning, for that is sure good. I would let him at first read any English book which happens to engage his attention because you have done a great deal when you have brought him to have entertainment from a book. He'll get better books afterwards.
Samuel Johnson
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There is no book so poor that it would not be a prodigy if wholly made by a single man.
Samuel Johnson